In a single day, June 25, President Obama signed disaster declarations for Alaska, Arkansas, New Jersey (an amended Sandy declaration) and for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
That same day, President Obama gave a major policy speech on climate change, basically saying that he has given Congress enough time to act to avert the greatest threat to humanity that exists.
And Congress, possessed by the “Flat Earth Society” – climate change deniers who are almost universally bought and paid for by the Fossil Fuel Industry – has utterly failed to fulfill their singular function, to protect the health and welfare of the nation.
He basically said that he isn’t waiting anymore and will do what he can on his own, issuing executive orders that include, among other things, for the first time, placing carbon emissions standards on existing coal-fired power plants. His administration has already placed emissions standards on new plants. Coal-fired power plants are responsible for 40 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
He reiterated his declaration during his weekly address for the week:
“Already, we know that the 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15, and that last year was the warmest in American history. And while we know no single weather event is caused solely by climate change, we also know that in a world that’s getting warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by it – more extreme droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.
“Those who already feel the effects of a changing climate don’t have time to deny it – they’re busy dealing with it. The firefighters who brave longer wildfire seasons. The farmers who see crops wilted one year, and washed away the next. Western families worried about water that’s drying up.
“The cost of these events can be measured in lost lives and livelihoods, lost homes and businesses, and hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency services and disaster relief. And Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction in higher food costs, insurance premiums, and the tab for rebuilding.
“The question is not whether we need to act. The question is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late.
“The national Climate Action Plan I unveiled will cut carbon pollution, protect our country from the impacts of climate change, and lead the world in a coordinated assault on a changing climate.”
The Republicans predictably howled back that Obama was acting like a tyrant, that he was issuing job-killing edicts.
In fact, they like the $749 million they get from the fossil fuel industry donors (that’s three-quarters of a trillion dollars). It’s no surprise why the Koch Brothers, who have become among the wealthiest people in the world from oil, are personally spending millions to advance some political careers and destroy others, and are the biggest funders of the climate change deniers, all in order to protect their money and power.
But the president contradicted the claim that transitioning to a green economy would be bad for the economy.
“See,” he said, “the problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it suggests a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity. These critics seem to think that when we ask our businesses to innovate and reduce pollution and lead, they can’t or they won’t do it. They’ll just kind of give up and quit. But in America, we know that’s not true. Look at our history.
“The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technologies — we’ve used science; we’ve used research and development and discovery to make the old rules obsolete. “
“So the point is, if you look at our history, don’t bet against American industry. Don’t bet against American workers. Don’t tell folks that we have to choose between the health of our children or the health of our economy.”
In fact, more than 500 businesses, including giants like GM and Nike, issued a climate declaration, calling action on climate change “one of the great economic opportunities of the 21st century,” he said.
“A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine. I want America to build that future….
“I know some Republicans in Washington dismiss these jobs, but those who do need to call home — because 75 percent of all wind energy in this country is generated in Republican districts. And that may explain why last year, Republican governors in Kansas and Oklahoma and Iowa – Iowa, by the way, a state that harnesses almost 25 percent of its electricity from the wind – helped us in the fight to extend tax credits for wind energy manufacturers and producers. Tens of thousands good jobs were on the line, and those jobs were worth the fight.
“And countries like China and Germany are going all in, in the race for clean energy. I believe Americans build things better than anybody else. I want America to win that race, but we can’t win it if we’re not in it.”
Other measures that Obama initiated by executive action:
Directed the interior department to green light enough private, renewable energy capacity on public lands to power more than 6 million homes by 2020.
The Department of Defense – the biggest energy consumer in America – will install 3 gigawatts of renewable power on its bases, generating about the same amount of electricity each year as burning 3 million tons of coal.
Ending tax breaks for big oil companies, and invest in the clean-energy companies that will fuel our future [that will require the Republicans in Congress to support which they have already rejected multiple times.]
Set a new goal for the federal government to consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within the next seven years.
Encourage private capital to “get off the sidelines and get into these energy-saving investments.” For example, by the end of the next decade, combined efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings will reduce carbon pollution by at least three billion tons. “That’s an amount equal to what our entire energy sector emits in nearly half a year,” the president said.
But since it will be quite some time to stop and then reverse the warming, the seas will keep rising and storms will get more severe. So, a second – practical – avenue of attack for the president is to harden infrastructure against the ravages of climate change and stop subsidizing projects that do not take climate change into account.
And finally, the president took the reins to make the USA, the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter (despite having only 5 percent of the world’s population), a leader in the world for efforts to address climate change, that includes helping countries transition to cleaner sources of energy by mobilizing billions in private capital; end public financing for new coal plants overseas; negotiating for global free trade in environmental goods and services; and intensify “climate cooperation” with major emerging economies like India, Brazil and China.
“I am convinced this is the fight America can, and will, lead in the 21st century,” he said. “And I’m convinced this is a fight that America must lead. But it will require all of us to do our part. We’ll need scientists to design new fuels, and we’ll need farmers to grow new fuels. We’ll need engineers to devise new technologies, and we’ll need businesses to make and sell those technologies. We’ll need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components, but we’ll also need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a new clean energy era.
But then Obama acknowledged the elephant in the room – that climate change has become one of the many partisan, line-in-the-sand issues, even though it never used to be. And Congress is now blocking Obama’s nominee for EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (and will likely block any funding initiatives, or put in those poison-pill provisions in must-pass legislation to block any funding).
“But more broadly, we’ve got to move beyond partisan politics on this issue,” he said. “I want to be clear – I am willing to work with anybody – Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, greens – anybody — to combat this threat on behalf of our kids. I am open to all sorts of new ideas, maybe better ideas, to make sure that we deal with climate change in a way that promotes jobs and growth.” (that hardly sounds like the tyrant that Republicans like to make Obama out to be).
“Nobody has a monopoly on what is a very hard problem, but I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm. And ultimately, we will be judged as a people, and as a society, and as a country on where we go from here….
“I understand the politics will be tough. The challenge we must accept will not reward us with a clear moment of victory. There’s no gathering army to defeat. There’s no peace treaty to sign. When President Kennedy said we’d go to the moon within the decade, we knew we’d build a spaceship and we’d meet the goal. Our progress here will be measured differently – in crises averted, in a planet preserved. But can we imagine a more worthy goal? For while we may not live to see the full realization of our ambition, we will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be better off for what we did. “
Shifting to clean, renewable energy will free Americans from their enslavement to fossil fuel, to endless wars fought to protect access to foreign oil, to the high and ever-rising cost of gasoline at the pump and home heating oil, to the torment of families whose children suffer from asthma. Communities – including Long Island – now live in fear of increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires – as storms become more severe and frequent; the seas are clearly rising which will produce 200 million “climate” refugees who have to abandon their homes to find higher ground.
One of the major aspects of the president’s speech was when he said that approval of the Keystone Pipeline would have to also be contingent on an analysis of its benefit to our national interest (as opposed to Canada’s and the companies), and that there would have to be some calculation of the carbon emissions.
But as NASA climate scientist James Hanson has said, the tar sands oil burns so much more carbon, if Canada’s entire supply was burned, it would be “game over” for Planet Earth. And one of the key thresholds has already been hit.
“We have reached a disturbing milestone,” wrote Vanessa Kritzer of the League of Conservation Voters, “concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, have hit 400 parts per million in our planet’s atmosphere. The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was millions of years ago — and it had a catastrophic impact. Average temperatures rose by as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels ranged between 16 to 131 feet higher than current levels.
In 2012 alone, we had11 different weather disasters that each cost the United States more than $1 billion – that’s $11 billion. the Republicans just slashed $25 billion from food stamps. How is that good policy or even good economics? Imagine if you invested that $11 billion a year to shift away from fossil fuels, which are a finite resource and will eventually be exhausted (while the cost will skyrocket) and which cause misery of uncalculated proportions?
But just as every major technological revolution – including the Industrial Revolution which changed agriculture, automobiles which put blacksmiths and horse-and-buggy entities out of work, and electricity which replaced whale oil (they would have been anyway because they hunted whales to near extinction), the renewable energy will create new opportunities.
In fact the Green Economy is expected to produce 25 million new jobs that cannot be outsourced or off-shored.
Clean, renewable energy – tapping the sun, wind, waves and earth’s own heat will probably be the most liberating revolutions of the 21st century – which is what gives the Koch brothers and the military-industrial complex their greatest fits. They want people to be dependent on fossil fuel, so they can push up prices and everyone will just have to eat it, literally. Why is it, do you think, that even coming out of the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, that Big Oil continues to pocket profits at rates never seen in human history. Because they can. And it is that power and control that these entrenched interests are fighting to hold on to. This isn’t a question of the cost of production plus a margin of profit. This is gouging.
The Obama Administration’s increase in fuel standards for cars (and now for the first time, trucks), means that families will be able to travel twice as far and pay half as much at the pump on a single tank of gas. That means they will have more discretionary funds to spend as they like, rather than pay their pound of flesh to Big Oil.
Long Island Sierra Club representative Matt Kearns greeted Obama’s Climate change speech with great enthusiasm.
“This is the change Long Islanders have been waiting for on climate. President Obama is finally putting action behind his words, which is exactly what the Sierra Club, our 2.1 million members and supporters, and coalition partners have worked mightily to achieve. Today, we applaud him for taking a giant step forward toward meeting that goal.
“By committing to establish new energy efficiency standards for federal buildings and appliances, scale up responsible clean energy production on public lands with an ambitious new goal to power 6 million homes by 2020, and use the full authority of the Clean Air Act to cut dangerous carbon pollution from power plants, the President is stepping up to reduce the climate-disrupting pollution that is destabilizing our climate while threatening our economy and endangering our communities and families with extreme weather like Sandy.
“We’re especially vulnerable to rising seas and more intense storms here on Long Island, so are hopeful that these actions by the President will help safeguard our families and our economy from future disasters and inspire greater clean energy commitments from our state and local leaders.
“We look forward to a day when the Administration sees fracked gas for what it is – a fossil fuel of the past and a threat to public health. Nevertheless, the President’s plan gives us hope that he will cement his climate legacy and protect future generations by ending destructive oil drilling in the Arctic, rejecting dangerous nukes, halting mountaintop removal, abandoning dirty fossil fuels in favor of clean energy – and by making the critically important decision to reject the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL pipeline.”
What Obama said about Keystone is the measure that Gov. Cuomo should use in weighing whether the state should allow hydrofracking.
AsJosh Fox, the director of “Gasland Part II,” has said, all the carbon emissions and negative impacts of fracking need to be considered, including the amount of methane released into the air, the toxic soup of chemicals that have to be injected, indeed, the thousands and thousands of gallons of water that are polluted with the injection process – water that should be available for drinking.
And if you thought Long Island would not be affected by fracking because that is happening “upstate”, one of the cautions that the anti-fracking activists have raised is that the waste from the process would be trucked to treatment plants on Long Island and that the natural gas produced by fracking would not be used to benefit New Yorkers, but would in fact be shipped to other markets.
And now, Nassau County Legislator Dave Denenberg, along with Clean Ocean Action from New Jersey and South Shore LI groups, have raised the alarm and declared their opposition to a proposed offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.
“The proposed LNG facility, ‘Port Ambrose,’ would be located in coastal waters just south of Jones Beach and create air and water pollution and destroy important fisheries and habitats. Additionally, it could pose a major security threat to a densely populated area,” he stated.
“Compelling evidence shows the port may also be used to export domestic shale gas abroad, as opposed to acting as an import terminal for LNG, as originally proposed.”
Legislator Denenberg and Clean Ocean Action, at a July 1 rally, called on the Maritime Authority to extend the public comment period to 120 days and requesting more hearings be held. Currently, only two hearings had been scheduled (on Tuesday, July 9, in Long Beach and on Wednesday, July 10, in Edison, N.J.) and a mere four hours (two per hearing) allotted for public comment.
